David Michael Miller
Marcy and Buddy Huffaker didn’t sign up to be Jewish ambassadors in Baraboo, Wisconsin. But after a prom photo of Baraboo high school boys throwing up a “Heil Hitler” salute became international news, the Huffakers, whose kids, as far as they know, are the only Jews at Baraboo High, have dedicated themselves to helping their town make sense of all the unwanted attention from the outside world.
“People keep reaching out to tell their stories, or apologize, or ask what we think,” Marcy says. The Huffakers wrote an op-ed for the local paper, and, along with community leaders, helped organize a series of public forums.
By now everyone, from CNN’s Don Lemon to the comedian Sarah Silverman, has weighed in on the Baraboo controversy. The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum in Poland even tweeted a statement.
There’s been a barrage of commentary on social media, from grotesque white supremacist propaganda to direct threats against the boys in the photo. Their families say they fear for their safety. School staff say colleges have called to rescind admissions offers. The whole community is in an uproar.
Through it all, the Huffakers have kept their feet on the ground.
“Obviously, our family feels it was fully inappropriate and insensitive,” Buddy says. “But it was much more a stupid moment than an organized white supremacist gathering.”
The Huffakers see an important distinction between the “stupid moment” and what happened afterwards — the posting and reposting of the photo and the racist sentiments that were attached to it, for which they don’t blame the boys.
“We know a lot of those boys,” Marcy says, “and I imagine for the most part they never thought their actions could have these consequences.”
Both Huffakers express regret at how the Baraboo boys have been targets of “hate” — the same word that has been used, repeatedly, to describe the boys’ act.
Despite their sympathy, the Huffakers say it’s important for the boys to take responsibility.
Some of the kids in the photo have tried to do just that, visiting the Huffakers’ home to acknowledge that they gave the Nazi salute, and to apologize for the pain they caused.
Questions about what exactly happened and what it all means are still unresolved.
Some things have been overblown. For example, the much-discussed white-supremacist OK sign one kid is flashing in the photo is also a common gesture kids use to play a joke on each other — holding their hands down low and pretending to have something between their fingers. It’s a game of “made you look.”
“It’s confusing to try to figure out who are the offenders,” Buddy says — some kids in the photo are participating in the salute, others are waving, some have their hands down. “And who is the offended is even more unclear,” he adds. “Is it Zach and Eva [the Huffaker kids]? The Jews in Baraboo? In Wisconsin? Worldwide?”
A toxic social media environment has blown things out of human proportion, making it hard to settle on a reasonable response.
An anonymous, student-led Twitter account reposted the Nazi prom photo with the comment, “We even got the black kid to throw it up,” adding the district hashtag, #barabooproud.
White supremacist flyers landed in mailboxes in Baraboo and nearby towns.
Is a white supremacist group organizing within the Baraboo community? Or are people from outside exploiting the situation?
Buddy hopes a full investigation will uncover the facts.
“I don’t think this picture embodies the overall character of the community. We wouldn’t be here if it did,” he says.
“We live here and we want to stay here and make it a comfortable experience for our kids to go to school,” Marcy adds.
So the couple is trying to help their community heal.
In-on-one conversations, unlike Facebook posts and group meetings, the Huffakers feel they’ve been able to convey why the Nazi salute is such a big deal to their family, and also empathize with families who feel their boys are being blamed for all hate in the world.
While all the media attention has “fractured the healing process,” Buddy says, he and Marcy think something like this might have happened anyway, and the community needs to talk about it.
A lot of people in the small, rural community don’t know any Jews or people of color. Because of that, Buddy says, even when they make outright racist or anti-Semitic gestures, “It’s not really personal.”
Marcy and Buddy have made it personal. That’s the perfect antidote to ignorance and the anonymous hate that flourishes online.
“The whole community now knows there are some Jewish families here,” Buddy says. “And so now, if that gesture goes up, it definitely is intentional. You’ve got to hope that, walking down the hall, someone is going to be more thoughtful about saying something about the Native American kid, or the African American kid, or the Asian American kid.”
If things do get better, it will be because of the warmhearted diplomacy Marcy, Buddy, and their Baraboo neighbors are practicing.
